In the madhouse (all photos by Lanee Bird courtesy of Authority Figure)
I received an invitation to attend a show titled “Authority Figure,” subtitled: “An immersive choreography exploring our relationships to surveillance, big data, and policing as it mingles with our psychology.” I read the invite and immediately started to conjure visions of security forces with batons pushing people around and abusing them until an audience member (perhaps me) had a moment of psychotic break and wigged out, running and screaming into the dark. This thought was supported by the instructions I received via an mp3 file with a digitized voice telling me to show up on time and wear comfortable shoes (Why? So I can be beaten with them?). The event took place at the Knockdown Center in Maspeth, Queens. I showed up and was asked for my ID, then following the person in front of me, waited to receive my ticket. After confirming my place, I was given an envelope in which was a folded sheet detailing the crew of the show (directors, choreographers, ushers) and the various parts or locations (Tier 1, Tier 2, Bathroom). Then I had the palms of both my hands stamped with the words “mercy,” so I began to fantasize about being drugged and left for dead by the side of the road in semi-rural New Jersey, waking up to my wallet and phone gone, just a note with a person’s name in my pocket while a song by the Weeknd played in the distant background.
The student and teacher.
Then I walked into a waiting area with various tables around which people stood and talked. I went to the one that kind of looked like an apothecary, capsules on one side, cups of slightly blue water on the other. I asked what was in the pill. The woman seated at the table said “nothing”, while a guy standing next to me said “ecstasy.” She said “there’s nothing in them; you can break it open and see.” I took one anyway and swallowed it, thinking if I’m going to be drugged, goddamit, I’d do the drugging myself. I was a little disappointed that she hadn’t allowed the fantasy to flourish.
At the Authority Figure performance. In the center is the usher/actor who first greeted me and took me by the hand.
Soon we went in. The entire performance we were lead by an usher with a walkie-talkie who pointed or beckoned us, keeping my group, group five, moving through the various spaces. The first personal encounter I had was with someone named Jason, who took me by the hand and asked me what kind of day I had come from. Then he and all the other black-clad people went off to dance. There was a figure all in white at the kind of desk one finds in an elementary school, and then a pregnant woman began to dance with her. The movement throughout the show was all modern choreography with a shifting cast of dancers in different styles of dress. It was something you might have seen years ago at a Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane performance: the first set of dancers were perhaps the most interesting to me, because they seem to be caught in a scene from an asylum: sand on the floor, cavorting between large metal bookcases, spasmodic action, shaking, flailing and falling, dresses flying up overhead to reveal underwear, then being drug by their feet to another area, to be piled up on each other in a sleeping heap.
A scene where black-gloved hands are pretend guns
Most of the rest of the show continued in this vein. We moved from space to space, watching dancers move sometimes in choreographed unison, sometimes speaking, some dressed in all black, some in all white. It seemed when we were in a space of action (as opposed to a space of transition) we could go anywhere around the dancers, though I noticed that sometimes the woman with the walkie-talkie would pull people back. Another interesting interlude was the space where dancers brushed up against us and they moved from end to end of a room with a table and bank of electronic equipment. I saw one dancer approach a woman and stare at her for a long time, until the woman became visibly uncomfortable, masking that with an embarrassed smile. There is seemed like the show might turn into something slightly dangerous and real. Alas, the next space we moved to was the steamy powder room with performers, all in pink, applying makeup, fixing hair, shaving and doing the kind of primping one usually does in private.
In the warehouse, acting out being “caged”
In the powder room
At one point we were all asked to line up against the rail of a bar with our palms out and exposed. I thought here that the “mercy” tattoo on mine (no one else I saw had these) might make interesting difference. I was taken aside by the hand by one blonde woman to a smaller area with maybe five other people and ten dancers. Headphones were placed over my hears, while the dancers paired off and did more modern pas de deux, mostly with two women together. The music was faint and grainy, but sounded a bit like Radiohead from a few years ago, in the Kid A days. Then there was more wandering and more watching. By the seventh space I was bored and wished that someone would bring out the batons
The dancer who took me by the hand near the end
All in all, I’m not sure whether this show is aptly named. Authority only seemed to be metaphorically related to the action. I don’t know whether I should have rebelled or resisted being shuffled along. Would resisting have made the show burst into something different? It was visually engrossing, but mostly it felt like the staging of an elaborate modern dance recital — a bit like a Depeche Mode album, over-produced and atmospheric, fun to listen to the first few times, but not a work I would recommend.
“Authority Figure” continues at the Knockdown Center (52-19 Flushing Avenue, Maspeth, Queens) until Sunday, May 22.
